All About Social Media Benchmarks: How to Measure and Optimize Your Performance

Everybody’s talking about being successful on socials. But what even are social media benchmarks? Will I be successful if my post gets a thousand likes? Or does it matter more if I have 10k followers? Or do link clicks count the most?

Yes and no – to all of the above.

When it comes to assessing social media performance, context is what really counts. By context, we mean the broader picture – how you compare to your industry. So, for example, if you’re making content about a super niche topic, those 100 likes are probably huge, but if you’re in, say, a field as big as the beauty industry… Well, then, you were probably aiming for a little bit higher of a number.

Okay, but what do I do with this information? How does knowing about context help me get better at my job?

In this article, we’ll guide you through the essentials of benchmarking your social media performance and using those insights to improve your strategy. Whether you’re a small business or a Fortune 500, these steps will help you get your SMM game up.

Back to Basics: What Are Social Media Benchmarks?

To break it down, SM benchmarks involve analyzing key data points such as growth rate, engagement metrics, posting frequency, clicks, plays, and all the rest.

In essence, benchmarks provide a 360-degree view of your performance, helping you answer critical questions like: “How effective is my current strategy?” and “What steps can I take to improve?”

Why Are Social Media Benchmarks Important?

The point of this is to help you identify your strong sides and weaknesses. With benchmarks, you can:

• Understand how your efforts compare to competitors,
• Identify gaps and areas for improvement,
• Stay current with industry trends and standards,
• Optimize resource allocation and budget planning.

Firstly, you get competitor insights. You get to learn what’s working for your competitors and discover new strategies to improve your performance. Obviously, this doesn’t mean you should copy them, but taking inspiration is crucial to staying relevant in a fast-paced, trend-based industry.

We also mentioned audience understanding. Benchmarks will help you determine how well your content resonates with your audience and pinpoint areas that need refinement.

Finally, budget optimization is a big advantage of benchmarks (and probably the one your boss will be the happiest to hear about). When you know what works well and what needs some fixing, you’ll be able to focus your resources on targeted areas rather than spending without clear insight into what you’ll get in return.

How to Create a Benchmark 

Hopefully, we’ve managed to convince you how important these benchmarks are by now. If so, we can move on to showing you how to establish benchmarks. 

And if not… Just keep reading until you believe us because these insights really will help you in your SM efforts. 

But if you’re ready to get started – here’s a step-by-step breakdown of what you need to do:

Step 1: Define Your Goals

Start by clarifying why you’re on social media in the first place and what you aim to achieve. If you’re already an established creator, focus on goals for the upcoming month/quarter/whatever other strategic period you’re planning for. Or, if this is your first time, know that you’re stepping into it well-prepared.

Are you looking to:

• attract new customers?
• drive sales for your online store?
• build up an audience?
• increase engagement with your current audience?

Step 2: Select Platforms to Benchmark

Focus your efforts on the platforms most relevant to your business. If you’re just starting out, this bit might take some extra research, but it’ll be worth it in the end.

Here’s what to look for:

• Where your target audience is active the most,
• Which platforms bring you the most value,
• The growth potential of those platforms,
• How you’re doing there compared to your competitors.

Step 3: Choose Relevant Metrics

Not all metrics are equally valuable for every goal. So, after you’ve clearly defined your desired outcomes, pick the metrics by which you’ll be judging your success.

Depending on your objectives, you might want to track:

• Follower growth rate, if you want to reach a wider audience,
• Engagement metrics, such as likes, comments, shares, and overall interactions,
• Posting frequency and how increasing/decreasing it will affect other parameters,
• Content performance and what results you’re getting from different kinds of content (videos vs. static images, stories vs. posts, text-based vs. visuals,…)

Step 4: Use the Right Social Media Benchmarking Tools

Accurate benchmarking requires accurate tools. Here are some popular options:

• Keyhole tracks real-time and historical data on metrics such as engagement, sentiment, and top posts,
• Sprout Social provides competitor analysis and advanced analytics,
• Hootsuite Analytics offers insights into trends and audience behavior,
• Social Insider is great for detailed competitor benchmarking.

Step 5: Turn That Data Into Actionable Insights

Finally, after you’ve done your due diligence, you can use your benchmarking data to identify actionable steps. For example:

• If competitors excel with video content, consider increasing your video output,
• If they’re doing UGC, reach out to influencers yourself or partner up with a specialized UGC agency to give you a hand,
• If your engagement rates are low, experiment with different content types or posting times if your engagement rates are low.

Whatever the case may be, these benchmarks will give you a clear insight into what needs to be done and make creating the next strategy that much easier. As with all things in life, the key is to sit back, reflect, and work to improve.

But enough about philosophy, let’s talk about some tips and tricks!

Best Practices for Social Media Benchmarking

Regularly Update Your Benchmarks.‍

Social media trends change quickly – very quickly. So, it’s important you occasionally sit down with your team and your laptop and reassess what has been done so far and how it can be done even better.

Focus on Quality, Not Quantity.‍

Once you have your goals laid out, you’ll know exactly which metrics matter the most. You can then make sure to focus on staying on top of those rather than putting out content just for the sake of it.

Monitor Competitors Wisely.‍

Yes, we understand how busy you are – but take an hour or two each week to just check in on what your biggest competitors are doing. This will not only give you new ideas but also make working on your next benchmarks that much easier.

Leverage Analytics.‍

Even if looking at raw numbers can be a little bit boring to some, it’s an essential part of the job. There are plenty of social media benchmarking tools out there that can help with that, and you can use them to work for you and make the whole process easier.

Social Media Benchmarks: Key Takeaways

 In short, here are the most important notes to take away from this article: 

• Social media benchmarks are essential for assessing your performance by providing context and comparing results to industry standards.
  
• To start, you need to define what you want to achieve (e.g., engagement, sales, or reach) to identify relevant metrics.
  
• Regularly updating your benchmarks, prioritizing quality over quantity, and keeping your finger on the pulse of industry trends and your competitors are the secrets to success.

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